We at UnitedNY are urging the State Legislature to let high-cost areas around the state lift fast food, airport, car wash and other low-wage workers out of poverty and into the middle class through local wage authorization.

Nationally more than one in three airport workers lives in poverty and relies on public assistance to make ends meet. Outsourcing of baggage porter jobs more than tripled between 2002 and 2012, while wages dropped by 45 percent.